The Prince’s Heart

15. Chapter 15

Chapter fifteen

“T ell me what happened,” I say to Kenessa as we walk toward the rooms she and Samis share. In the short time it took me to get dressed, the sun began to rise, and now soft morning light filters in through the hallway windows. All the fatigue I was feeling before is completely gone. “Is it the same illness that Father has?”

“I … don’t know,” she replies. “He seemed fine most of the day, but when we sat down for dinner, he said he was feeling nauseous. He could barely eat anything at all. It didn’t seem as bad as what your father had, so he thought maybe it was just a cold. In any event, he didn’t want to bother you or your mother with it. I told him to lie down, but a few hours later he could barely even get out of the bed.”

Samis ignoring food? That is concerning . “He hasn’t gotten worse since then, right?”

She nods. “That’s right. But he hasn’t improved, either.”

“And you’re sure it isn’t a cold?”

“I suppose it might be, but I’m still worried. If it wasn’t for your father, I’d say Samis would be right as rain in a few days, if it even took that long. But if he has whatever illness your father does…” She doesn’t have to finish the sentence. “I didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry for waking you up, but I had to tell someone, and you were the first person who came to mind.”

“It’s alright,” I reassure her. “Maybe you’re right, and he just has a cold. Or perhaps he ate something that disagreed with him.” It sounds unlikely, even to me, but I have to cling to whatever hope I can find, or I’ll collapse right here in the hallway. “Even if he and Father do have the same illness, Samis is young and healthy. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

“I hope you’re right, Darien. I really do.”

We reach the doors to her rooms, and she pauses for a moment, calm visibly settling over her like a shroud. “Alright,” she says. “Let me take you to him.”

She leads me through their rooms and into their bedroom. The sunlight coming through the windows isn’t very bright, but even so, I can tell Samis doesn’t look good. His skin is sallow, waxy, and yellow—perhaps not quite as bad as Father’s, but it’s obvious that something is wrong with him. It’s an arresting sight, and I feel like I have to struggle to put one foot in front of the other, as though my mind is trying to tell me to run, to ignore my sick brother, like everything will be fine if I can just not see it.

But I can no more ignore Samis than I can forget my own name, so I walk up to him, an increasing sense of dread flowing through my mind.

Samis opens his eyes as Kenessa and I approach. “Hello, Darien.” His voice is labored. “Sorry to get you out of bed. I know you’ve had a long day.”

I sit on the edge of his bed, taking his hand in mine; it’s cold and clammy. “Don’t worry about it, Samis. You know I’m always here for you.”

He smiles weakly and starts to respond, but before he can, he starts coughing.

I wait for his coughs to subside. “Is there a reason why you haven’t gone to the infirmary yet?” I ask gently.

“Don’t want to scare Mother and Father.”

I almost smile despite myself. Typical Samis, always thinking of others instead of himself .

“I’m sure I’ll be fine,” he continues, “and they’ve got more than enough on their minds already.”

Looking at him, I’m not nearly as certain. “All the same, we might want to send for a healer to take a look at you. We’ll do it quietly, so we don’t alert Mother and Father. Just as a precaution.”

He coughs again a few times; each one is like a drumbeat, pounding in my ears. “If it will make you feel better, then by all means, go ahead. Just make sure not to bother them.”

“I will,” I say. He didn’t even try to fight back. “Kenessa, I’m going to go send someone to fetch a healer. I’ll be right back.”

She nods, all traces of her previous lack of composure gone, and I go find a servant, instructing him to go to the infirmary and bring back a healer without alerting either of my parents. Then I return to Samis’s bedroom and listen to him talk with Kenessa for a while, although for the most part their conversation goes in one ear and out the other. One thought cycles through my mind: They will get better. They have to .

About ten minutes later, the servant returns with Arille. She takes one look at Samis before asking me and Kenessa to leave the room so she can examine him; I’m guessing she doesn’t really need privacy but doesn’t want us hovering over her. So, Kenessa and I sit in Samis’s antechamber in heavy silence, both of us evidently afraid to break the spell.

A short time later, Arille exits the bedroom. Kenessa is on her feet in a flash, barely waiting for her to shut the door.

“Well?” Kenessa asks, a touch of impatience in her tone. “What is it? Is he going to get better?”

Arille’s unease is betrayed by the way the corners of her mouth are turned down just a bit. “All the evidence points to both His Majesty and His Royal Highness having wasting fever. For the most part, their symptoms are in line with what we would expect. I understand that the two of them recently visited Fort Alesen?” She waits for us to nod. “After His Majesty fell ill, I checked with one of the palace clerks, who informed me that there have been several cases of wasting fever in Fort Alesen, all of them reported within the last day or so. It is certainly plausible that they both contracted it there. While we cannot be entirely certain that wasting fever is, in fact, the cause, there are currently several other patients in the infirmary with similar symptoms who are known to have visited areas where the disease is present, so it seems likely.”

“Wait a second,” I say. “Should the rest of us be worried about catching it from them?”

“As far as we are aware, patients with wasting fever are not directly contagious to others. Most likely, it is transmitted through drinking contaminated water. As long as Your Royal Highnesses stay away from the outlying villages, you should be fine. Even if it is contagious, you have both already spent a good amount of time in close contact with those who have already fallen ill, so it’s a bit too late to be worrying about that. However, if you are concerned, there’s no harm in isolating yourselves for a few days to be certain.”

Kenessa shakes her head vigorously. “No. Absolutely not. I appreciate your suggestion, but I’m not going to abandon Samis while he’s ill. If I get sick too, then so be it.”

“Of course, Your Royal Highness,” Arille says with a slight bow. “I understand completely.”

Kenessa takes a deep breath; I’m guessing she wasn’t expecting Arille to agree with her quite so easily. “In the meantime, is there anything you can do?” she asks, her voice restrained. “Can you cure them? Or at least treat them somehow?”

Arille shakes her head again. “I’m sorry, but if wasting fever is indeed the cause of their illnesses, there isn’t much we can do. Of course, they may still get better—it is far from uncommon for the disease to resolve on its own after a few days. But as much as I wish otherwise, all we can do is wait, and try to make them comfortable.”

With that, Arille returns to Samis’s bedroom, and after we’ve had a chance to compose ourselves, Kenessa and I join her and sit with Samis while he sleeps. Every so often, he wakes and talks to Kenessa and me for a few minutes before he falls back asleep. Arille keeps a watchful eye on him for a few hours, until another healer takes over.

Like with Father yesterday, I hold out hope for good news, but it gets harder with every minute. As the hours pass, Samis’s condition doesn’t improve, and my hope slowly but steadily slips away. By noon, nearly seven hours after Kenessa woke me, he’s noticeably worse, and we decide that we can keep this from Mother no longer. I volunteer to be the one to tell her. At least I can check on Father while I’m in the infirmary. It almost hurts to leave Samis while he’s in this state, but Mother deserves to know.

Yet, the moment I walk into the infirmary, all thoughts of Samis flee my mind. Father’s face looks sunken and sallow, even more jaundiced than yesterday, and his breathing is ragged, like his lungs are fighting against him. Seeing him this way nearly takes my breath away, too. I don’t need a healer to tell me he’s unlikely to get better anytime soon.

Mother and Emma are sitting by Father’s bedside with near-identical grim expressions on their faces. Neither of them looks up; in fact, Mother’s eyes never even left Father’s face for the barest second at the sound of the door. I expected her eyes to be dull, but instead they’re bright and hard. It’s only after I’ve started telling her about Samis that she looks away from Father, although her expression doesn’t change at all.

Once I’m finished talking, she glances from me to Father indecisively, not responding for a few seconds. Then she turns back to me and says, “I’ll go to Samis. You stay here and send a messenger if there’s even the slightest change in your father’s condition.”

I nod, afraid to say anything, and she leaves me to sit with Emma and the dying husk of my father.

I spend the rest of the day going back and forth between Samis’s bedroom and the infirmary, constantly afraid something will happen to Father while I’m with Samis and vice versa. They each get progressively worse, and any hope of recovery slowly vanishes with each passing minute. Occasionally, Samis still wakes and talks to whoever’s in the room with him, but his voice becomes weaker and weaker each time.

Sometime around midnight, Mother insists I get some sleep, even if it’s a few hours. I’m far too numb to disobey. When I get back to my rooms, exhausted mentally and physically, the only thing I want is to sleep.

But then I open the door of my bedroom, and it takes a few moments for me to register the fact that Tag is sitting on the edge of my bed. I’m not sure if he’s a hallucination, but if he is, he’s a welcome one.

He looks up when I walk in, and immediately stands up and comes over to me, stopping a few feet away. “I’m so sorry about your father and your brother,” he says quietly. “I came by earlier, but Joram told me you were in the infirmary, and I didn’t want to bother you, so I just figured I’d wait here instead.” He takes a deep breath. “I know you’re probably tired right now, so if you want me to go I can—”

I don’t let him finish the sentence. Instead, I close the distance between us and wrap my arms around him, holding him like I’m lost at sea, and he’s my life raft. He holds me back, his touch gentle, enveloping me in his warmth. Without warning, there are tears running down my cheeks, and I cling to him even closer. “Please stay, Tag.” My voice breaks when I say his name. “ Please . I need you.”

Somehow, I’m sitting on the bed with Tag’s arms still wrapped around me.

“I’m here, Darien,” he whispers. “I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

I let him hold me while I cry. He doesn’t let go of me for a second, even when the tears are gone and exhaustion is all that’s left, and I fall asleep in his arms.

For the second day in a row, I wake before dawn. I feel like I didn’t sleep at all, but my boots have been removed and Tag is out cold next to me, so I must have, even if only for an hour or two.

In my exhausted state, it takes me a few moments to realize what woke me up. Finally, my eyes focus on Joram, who’s standing off to one side of the room. His head hangs low, his shoulders slumped, as though the weight of the world rests on his shoulders. Whatever hope I had left is extinguished like a dying flame just seeing him like this.

When he sees I’m awake, he motions for me to follow him. I get out of bed, taking care not to wake Tag, and leave my bedroom. I briefly question whether it’s a problem that Joram saw us sleeping in the bed together before I decide I couldn’t care less right now.

“What is it?” I ask Joram quietly. I think I already know what he’s going to tell me, but I still have to ask. “Is it Father?”

“Your Royal Highness…” Joram’s voice is uneven, perhaps the first time I’ve ever heard it so. “The queen is here to see you.”

My mood, already terrible, drops down another notch. “Is…” There are only a few reasons I can think of as to why Mother would leave Father and Samis right now, and none of them are good. Maybe this is all just a bad dream . “Is Father alright? And Samis?”

Joram hesitates. “You should speak to the queen,” he finally says.

I can tell I’m not going to get anything more from him, so I walk into the antechamber, as though I’m sleepwalking. Mother is there, her eyes red and puffy and her lips pinched into a grimace. She looks worn, as though she’s aged ten years in the last few days.

“Darien…” She trails off and swallows. “I have to tell you something.”

My vision grows blurry, and I blink a few tears away, the first of what I’m guessing will be many. “Tell me. Please.”

She looks me in the eye, her gaze nearly as dull and empty as I feel. “Your father is dead.”